Estranged (14 page)

The darkness within Kalei stirred and
swelled as it fed on the sudden influx of rage that poured through
her veins “Who the fuck—!”

Shenaia grimaced. “I don’ know. The
guy—”

“
Terin!” Kalei looked away
from Shenaia and her eyes scoured the monitors with their haphazard
shots of Downtown. “He owns this fucking place! It’s his cameras;
he—”

“
It wasn’t me.”

Kalei spun around and looked down the
aisle. The elevator door was beginning to shut as Terin walked past
the towers.

Kalei took three steps toward him,
then stopped. Terin continued to walk until he reached the edge of
the small room, then he stopped too.

Kalei didn’t dare cross the four feet
between them, but that didn’t stop her from lashing out. “You’re a
fucking liar! If it wasn’t you, then who the fuck could’ve done
it?”

“
The cameras’
inventor.”

“
Oh, so you’re going to
throw the blame to someone else, huh? And who the fuck is that?
Sorry little boy, but ‘Great Estranged Inventors’ wasn’t a topic in
my history class.”

Terin put his hands behind his back
and straightened his shoulders. “You know who it is because you
told me he was there.”

“
Who? Blondie?”

“
Yes, Xamic.”

“
So what’re you saying?
One day he just gets up and decides it’s a good idea to swarm a
house with Estranged?” Kalei raised her arms and mocked a male
voice. “‘Hell, while I’m at it, might as well jack a news station
and transmit the whole thing so everyone can have a good laugh.’ Is
that it?”

Terin casually looked away and studied
one of the towers. “Something like that.”

“
What the fuck aren’t you
telling me? Why’d Xamic pick my house?”

Terin looked her in the eyes. Kalei
saw nothing in the steady gaze of his stone grey irises. They were
as stoic and unyielding as the Alundai Mountains.

He answered, “To send me a
message.”

Kalei didn’t break eye contact. “What
message?”

“
Six feet of dirt isn’t
enough to bury history.”

Kalei blinked. “What the hell is that
supposed to mean?”

Quietly, he asked, “Why do you want to
join SWORDE?”

Kalei glared at him. “Don’t redirect
me with a question.”

“
I answered your
questions. Now answer mine.”

“
No you
didn’t!”

As though nothing had transpired, he
repeated the question in the same even tone as before. “Why do you
want to join SWORDE?”

Kalei clenched her fists. “Because I’m
just waiting for the day when I get to watch your carcass
bleed.”

“
You can do that any time.
Here’s a knife. Go right ahead.” From his back pocket, he produced
a pocketknife, which he flicked open with a jerk of his wrist and
offered to her.

Kalei looked away from the knife and
snarled, “You know what I mean. Ripping you open is only satisfying
if it ends with you dead.”

Terin didn’t reply. He simply folded
the knife shut and returned it to his pocket.

Kalei said, “The first day I came
here, Erit said you guys would teach me how to kill Estranged if I
become a Warden. Is that true?”

“
It is.”

“
So even though you know I
will kill you, you’ll still teach me?”

“
You won’t kill
me.”

“
How the hell do you
know?”

Terin replied, “You aren’t strong
enough. You never will be.”

“
Like shit! You have no
fucking clue what you’re dealing with! Once I know how, I am going
to come after—”

“
Kalei, don’t—” Shenaia
started, but Kalei turned on her.

“
Shut up, you fucking
Estranged!”

Shenaia stood up and took
a step toward Kalei. “You’re calling
me
the ‘fucking Estranged’? Last I
checked, you were Estranged too, bitch. You’d better get that
through your pretty little head before you get yourself
hurt.”

“
Where’d the mask go,
Shenaia? I thought you were trying to be my friend? Yeah, fucking
right, you were just waiting to catch a sweet high from a newbie.
Am I right?”

“
Fuck you! I’m trying to
help you! You don’t know jack shit about who—”

Terin appeared between them, but
before Kalei could react, she felt his hand on the back of her neck
and her entire body went rigid. Shenaia froze too.

Terin said, “Shenaia, give me Walker’s
key and get out of here.” He released his grip on her neck and
Shenaia’s body relaxed again. She continued to glare at Kalei as
she dug a hand into her pocket, produced the key, and dropped it on
the floor. She broke eye contact and walked past Kalei to the
elevator.

Once the elevator door shut, Terin
removed his hand from her neck. Control returned to her limbs as he
walked over to the computer, sat down in the creaking chair, and
began to click through the blue program.

Kalei asked, “Why was my family used
to send you a message?”

Terin didn’t turn around or pause in
his work as he said, “What are you going to do when we’re all dead,
Kalei?”

“
Answer my
question.”

“
Erit will still teach you
to kill Estranged once you are qualified.”

“
Not that
question!”

He continued to type. “What would you
do if you knew where to find Fenn?”

Kalei could feel her rage escalating
again. “Answer my fucking question.”

Terin spun around and yelled, “YOU
ANSWER MINE!”

Kalei froze. She had never heard Terin
raise his voice before. His words seemed to hang in the air. She
wanted to answer, she tried to think of something to say, but his
steely glare terrified her.

He closed his eyes, and when he opened
them, the glare was gone, replaced with his usual stoic composure.
He calmly repeated the question, “What would you do if you knew
where to find Fenn?”

Kalei said, “I’d make sure he’s
safe.”

“
And then
what?”

“
I would
leave.”

“
Why?”

“
Because I don’t want him
to die.”

Terin turned back to the computer and
put his right hand on the mouse, but he didn’t move it. He said,
“It doesn’t work like that. If you attempt to find Fenn, I will
kill you myself.”

He dismissed her.

CHAPTER
EIGHT

Dancing with the
Past

Kalei didn’t remember what happened
after that. A week later, she woke up in what Erit called a
“Recovery Room.” This, of course, was just a fancy name for the
demolished rooms of the hotel, like the first one she had visited
with the broken glass. This room was a sibling to the first
Recovery Room she’d stayed in. The metal nightstand was dented and
had two legs missing, a pile of grey plastic, frayed wires, and
chunks of sanded pinewood sat where a TV should have been. Kalei
sat in the bloodstained remains of a shredded feather bed. The
smell wasn’t great. Her first instinct was to check her feet for
glass. She was both relieved and disappointed when she found
none.

What do I do now?
Cold, late fall air poured in through the
shattered window, drawing Kalei’s attention to the overcast sky.
She watched the swollen, low-hanging clouds roll silently past the
enormous Terondac Mountain, its slate peak reaching for the grey
clouds without quite touching them. But the clouds and the mountain
only reminded her of how bleak and desolate the world had
become.

Kalei took a deep breath and
remembered something her mother had taught her before she died.
Whenever Kalei had a problem, her mother had insisted, “Start by
listing what you know.” It was a silly exercise, but doing it
always made Kalei feel closer to those days at the kitchen table,
talking to her mom about everything from life to
homework.

So Kalei leaned back against the
wooden headboard of the bed and started gathering facts. It was
hard to do with the darkness pounding at the back of her skull, but
she tried anyway.

I know the names of five
people within SWORDE now, and I know the name of my parents’
killers. And I know that one of them is the Director of
SWORDE.
Kalei took another deep
breath.
I know that SWORDE will train me
to be a Warden, and I know where they keep their central computer.
Good. Now when Tusic is ready with the device, I can take it
straight there, after I get my hands on a key. But how am I going
to manage that?
Kalei’s eyes scoured the
cracked plaster on the ceiling. One piece looked dangerously close
to falling on her foot. She closed her eyes and focused her
thoughts.
Walker and Terin are the only
ones with keys, and getting close enough to either of them to steal
a key without notice doesn’t seem likely. When the time comes, I’ll
just have to take it by force... I hope Terin wasn’t lying about
them teaching me to kill. I don’t care what he says, he’s going to
be the first person I execute. In the meantime... looks like the
only thing for me to do is join this damn recruit
program.

Kalei pulled herself out of the bed,
went downstairs, and returned to training. The whole gang was
there: Erit at the head of the table, Shenaia at the opposite end,
and Mar still sitting to Erit’s left. Shenaia tried to say
something when Kalei stepped in, but whatever it was, Kalei ignored
her as she walked past Shenaia and sat down in her seat across from
Mar. Shenaia got the message and didn’t say anything
further.

While Shenaia sat in what was
essentially time out, Mar grunted at her blank wall, and Erit
taught Kalei how to pull back her darkness. In their earlier
lesson, when he had pushed Kalei’s darkness back, it turned out he
had done it using his own darkness. Now Kalei had to learn how to
pull back it back on her own. It was tricky at first. Grabbing the
darkness was like trying to grip the smooth exterior of a
skyscraper as she plunged to her death. There were no handholds,
only the havoc-inducing darkness spinning through her mind the
whole way down. This made it impossible to concentrate. But
eventually, she got it. Break one of the windows and you’ll find a
bloody handhold. And once she did, she yanked hard and shoved all
of the darkness into a small knot within her chest.

The pressure immediately built within
the mass of darkness, and before she could push the last shred into
the knot, her entire body screamed as a sensation like a thousand
suns exploding ripped through her. The next thing she remembered,
Erit was standing over her, explaining how the darkness was like an
agitated, carbonated beverage: it should never be
bottled.

He helped her up.

So instead of bottling the darkness,
Kalei had to learn how to vent the steam. First, she would pull
back the darkness. As she did so, the black would retreat from her
fingernails and she could feel some small amount of relief in her
arms. That was the most rewarding part of the process. Then she
would have to reintroduce a small amount of darkness into her
nails, or even redirect it elsewhere if she could, but that took
more concentration. So she watched as a controlled dose of darkness
crept back into her fingers.

Erit explained that
eventually she would have to come up with some sort of shape or
design through which she could channel her emotions. This would
serve as an outlet for the darkness and would help focus her
control of it. For example, one member of SWORDE had a sun on each
of her nails and the weather could become cloudy, rainy, or even
windy, depending on her mood. Erit himself had the spines of books
on each finger, the titles of which would change to whatever he
felt appropriate. When he told her this, Kalei took a glance and
saw the title
Robinson Crusoe
delicately etched in italics on each book. She
couldn't imagine the amount of control that would take.

For herself, Kalei started with a
single line that stretched from the base of her nail and reached
out into open space. It took a week for Kalei to make that line
stable. It would blur, it would bleed off into the rest of the
nail, and at the slightest noise in the room, her concentration
would break and her nails would flood black again.

But after about a week of working at
it around the clock, she mastered the technique. One of the perks
of being an Estranged was that she never got tired or hungry, which
left her with far more time to work. Of course, Erit still forced
her to take a break every now and again, during which she would
usually wander the hotel or shut her eyes and force her body into a
light sleep. Kalei wasn’t sure how it was possible that she could
sleep when she wasn’t tired, but she was grateful for the
opportunity to take a break from the world, if only for a little
while.

On her excursions through the hotel,
Kalei explored the various rooms, saw a few scuffles between
Wardens and new arrivals, and learned where the key points of
interest were. The building had a rec room, an indoor shooting
range, an armory, and – rumor had it – they even had a prison in
the basement. Kalei didn’t try looking for it just yet; she mostly
preferred to explore the empty upper floors where she didn’t have
to deal with the screams of unruly newcomers, or the watchful eyes
of the Wardens.